When it comes to happiness, deciding what and how to measure is a delicate art. However, there will always be an "unmeasurable" subjective element to happiness (one's disposition towards life). But I would argue that the things which can be measured are objective in that there are common things (excluding money) which universally contribute towards happiness. And these have yet to be explored.

I am not sure that they do argue that -- I think it is quite clear they use the aggregate data of subjective surveys completed by people rating themselves.

"...it is not clear whether it really would be such a good idea for the government to decide it knows better than individuals do what constitutes their happiness and how they can best pursue it."

Where was the claim made that the government knows better than an individual what will make them happy? This is your second misrepresentation of the study.

Is there some other metric a government should be more concerned with than its citizens' happiness and well-being? This goal is, after all, a central element of both the US Declaration of Independence and preamble to the US Constitution.

Happiness should be left to the individual, but I still see a role for the state in facilitating and providing the conditions so that individuals can seek their own happiness. Currently the stance is that by maximizing GNP and 'wealth' the government provides individuals with the best possible circumstances under which to pursue happiness. However better schools, more community establishments, parks, etc might provide better fodder for individuals to pursue activities that give them happiness (meeting others, exercising, and so on).

(1) The "feeling things being a-step-better for keeping one's own DNA alive" constitutes valid happiness. Otherwise, there is no humankind in the world.
(2) Money can buy valid happiness only when it is below or at its optimal point. Above the point, it buys less and less valid happiness, and then suffering more and more, and then human doomsday at last.

This man in the captioned photgraph really appears to be happy,nevertheless he might well be putting it on .
The economists should try to explore and develop a sustainable defintion of economics before commenting on happiness which means so many different things to different people.
While It is is hard to define and measure happiness,how would an economist calculate how to acheive it.
It is already going out of reach of humans.Leave it alone.

I can understand why you would have this reaction. The 'World Happiness Report' is packaged with an introduction which seeks to foster fears about the breakdown of the Earth's life support systems and an attack on the view that happiness is a matter to be pursued individually.
In my view, however, happiness measurement is benign. It shows that the happiest people are those who have control of their own lives.
For further explanation see: http://wintonbates.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/what-is-world-happiness-repor...

My reservation on this topic is that if Government is to Promote happiness, it will have to define it. Having defined happiness, it will create a Bureaucratic mechanism to put it in place. Having made this investment, Government will want to protect and expand it.
If , by some (highly probable )chance I might not agree with the "Standard Model of Happiness", I don't want to be ground up in the gears of said mechanism. All in all, I prefer to define happiness for myself, subject to change relative to my own experience, rather than trust the good intentions of my government to do it for me.

The idea is not for the government to promote happiness by itself defining happiness but for the government to research how people as a whole define their own happiness and then use that definition to shape policy.

Of course that approach will rightly exclude personal definitions of happiness that cause unhappiness to others.

and then decide for yourselves if Jigme Thinley and Bhutan government actually represent the last bastion of Mahayana Buddhism and the enlightened governance they purport to provide. Please ask Mr. Thinley or anyone else in the Bhutan government why they refuse to acknowledge any wrongdoing in the ongoing ethnic cleansing of over 1/6 their population for nearly 20 years -- making that country one of the top ten worst human rights abusers in the world. It's gross, it's national, but it is far from happy. The 100,000 refugees being placed around the world so far from the Nepalese camps are afraid to speak out because they still have relatives within Bhutan's borders who can and will be tortured or imprisoned or otherwise punished if they do. Bhutan will still not allow United Nations to visit southern Bhutan, where the rich lands were forcibly taken by the Buddhists. It is heartbreaking and needs to be brought out into the light. And wasn't it an Economist article a few years ago that considered whether Bhutan was actually interested in GNH, or just had to come up with some other measure in order to gain World Bank funding, because their GDP didn't measure up?

The happiness gurus and measurers are tinkering at the edges when profound understanding is required. SmitJ quotes Bertrand Russell saying "Happiness is a deep instinctive union with the stream of life." Einstein said that “The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.” Many saints and sages have said “Know thyself;” “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you,” etc.

In short, to be happy, we need to understand the universe in which we live, and live in accordance with its rules. But how to observe it? We don’t know the external world directly, we know it only through our sense doors. So to understand the universe, of which we are a microcosm, we need to understand ourselves; our own mind and body are the laboratory in which we can understand our universe.

With a little effort and training, each one of ourselves can observe that every part of our body constantly experiences a great variety of sensations, gross and subtle; and that these sensations are linked to our minds: mental changes are reflected in changed sensations, sensations induce mental changes. Observing ourselves closely, without reaction, we find the truth of the universe: that everything that exists is transitory, built of wavelets that arise and pass away with tremendous rapidity; that there is no solidity, nothing to cling to, nothing to call “I, me, mine.” Our tensions and dissatisfaction in life come from denying this reality, from craving for and clinging to things we want, from aversion for things we don’t want. When we understand the impermanent, transitory nature of all existence, we free ourselves from the causes of unhappiness, from focus on self, and are able to live peaceful harmonious lives, good for us and good for others.

Our happiness derives from our volition and our reactions; if we have unwholesome volition and are driven by reactions, constantly liking this, disliking that, wanting this, wanting to be rid of that, not recognising that we are the cause of our own suffering and dissatisfaction through our reactions to impermanent, transitory phenomena, we will be unhappy, whatever our external circumstances.

And we don’t need economists (of which I am one) to assess our happiness, or governments to devise costly schemes to promote it. It’s entirely down to our own efforts, our own understanding.

Genghis Cunn, you DO need governments to promote happiness since as I said in my reply to Energy Enthusiast below this is all about creating the conditions in which everyone can pursue happiness in their own way. Without appropriate government intervention we are easily seduced by business interests into simply equating happiness with the purchase of their latest product. Yes, an enlightened few can resist such pressures but the vast majority succumb to them and live benighted lives threatening the wellbeing of the planet as a result.

Expecting the necessary change to come about by individual action is just spitting in the wind.

My experience as an economic policy adviser to the UK, Australian and Queensland governments suggests to me that governments have over-extended and tend on balance to reduce their citizens' welfare rather than enhance it, and that they increasingly diminish the self-reliance and individual enterprise required for real happiness. If I were to suggest a government action to increase happiness it would be to significantly reduce its size and range, with much reduced intervention in the lives of its citizens

WHat is the government made of? Enlightened-self aware-buddha like-super humans? I will go on a limb and say: no. The type of government you are inferring to has never existed and never will as the minute it would exist ...it would become redundant as we will all be enlightened. The system is collapsing. Consumerism is reaching its limits and those limits will be severly tested over the next years. There may lie the foundation to get on the right path.

My experience as an environmental policy adviser to the British Labour Party suggests that on balance governments DO improve the welfare of their citizens. Government interventions have helped to change behaviour for the common good in such areas as pollution, dealing with waste, smoking and car accidents and hopefully there will be stronger interventions to curb global warming, obesity, drugs and alcoholism. Whatever its faults government is the only countervailing force to the malign influences ot those who are out to exploit the worst in human nature for private profit. Given sufficient support from those in a position to shape public opinion it can create the conditions in which the best in human nature can be allowed to flourish.

Good move by Economists to start focusing on happiness. If you're going to talk authoritatively about something you don't really understand, it's much safer to stick to something that can't be measured or quantified.

Objective measurement of happiness is not possible as it is a highly subjective sensation based on our totally subjective perception of reality, which perception is changing by multiple internal and environmental factors.
It is not surprising that politicians, and economists who created and are interested in maintaining our present consumer society, where everything depends on profit, annual growth would like to quantify happiness so they can use the numbers to improve their profit intake.
But it does not work.
If we want to get closest to any kind of understanding on overall happiness we need to remember that after all we are biological, living creatures as any other organisms, and as every living cell or vast living system is thriving towards harmony and homoeostasis, the happiness of living systems can be predicted how far or close they are to the optimum balance they can achieve.
At the moment humanity, despite its enormous technical and material development is the furthest from this harmony and balance within human society, and we have the precise statistics to show it: inequality, depression, suicide rate, drug, alcohol or other substance use, human induced chronic diseases, the collapse of the family model, no future prospects for the youth, lost hope in a sustainable future. Most striking is that almost all of the above is higher in the most developed, western style societies despite of the wealth on paper.
Thus if we are truly interested in "happiness" we need to study our global, integral system, its laws and then adapt to it in a way that is closest to the optimal homoeostasis of the system.

There is an oft repeated truism -- pervading just about every culture, clime, and faith, that the most important thing is to love your fellow as yourself. And of course, if you do the most important thing -- you are happy. And on mass scale we certainly get it as this is just what ZGHerm says above about harmony and homeostasis.

So we all already know this secret from religious and cultural foundations. Heck, its even in-your-face with 21st century scientific studies on every natural community from bacteria, to grasses, to -- well yes, even literally, the birds and the bees. So why aren't we actually following this altruistic prescription and being happy? Exactly because the ego gives us countless perceptions of internal and external forms that titillate from all angles of fancy. But like all varied sweets in place of balanced diet, in the end, deliver tummy ache and bulge, tooth decay, and diabetes.

So what is happiness? That answer is easy. Wafting away the marijuana smoke of even the fuzzy-wuzzy concept of "***LoVe***" in an old day-glow Peter Max poster, its real love -- mutual respect, mutual care, mutual responsibility.

The hard question is how to get it going. Hard introspection by the individual, developing the right environment by society as a whole. And most importantly for these -- for the present and future generations -- an education based on looking out for numbers 2 through 7 billion, rather than just number 1.

I understand that the big hook for people is to be "happy", however, I'm quite tired of hearing about happiness, seriously. Every pop culture psychology or self-help book whether speaking about relationships or business is telling us that if we want to be happy we must only permit "positive people" into our lives. People who aren't positive and happy are labeled as "toxic" or worse, "spiritual vampires". There are more enriching and enduring states of mind and being such as striving to contribute to your fellow man's happiness and connecting to those whom you judge as "negative". There's always something a person can do to reach out. We don't have to center our lives on the pursuit of personal happiness. It's quite possible that happiness cannot be pursued in this way but that it's a natural outcome of working on more mutual values. Happiness could be just a side effect, not the goal.

Ah. But you can measure happiness fairly objectively by asking people if they feel happy and similar techniques. You can then pursue policies that seem to produce a good score which may well be neither all out pursuit of profit or pursuit of homoeostasis. As a practical matter Denmark seems to win most of the surveys so one might try to adopt policies more similar to theirs.

Please stop this "measuring happiness" madness. Soon governments accross the world will begin setting up Orwellian "Happiness Ministries". I think the US Constitution got it right by letting each individual be responsible for the PURSUIT of their own happiness. Only if individuals are not free or able to pursue their own definition of happiness should government intervene.

EE you will note from my previous reply that the UN Conference and report was about the pursuit of happiness not imposing happiness on others i.e.creating the conditions in which people can be happy in their own way as long as they do not harm others. The cynics here are just setting up their straw men of what it's all about so that they can show off their knowledgeability by knocking them down. But knowledgeability is not the key to progress, wisdom is and this is what separates the men from the boys on matters of this sort.

Mr. Rosenthal, as one of the reluctant Cynics here I will defend Knowledgeability as the starting point of this discussion. Full disclosure of facts, with recall of and facility with them goes a long way towards achieving any kind of workable consensus on any topic that has objective inputs.
That said, there appears to be a fundamental assumption on the part of the UN conference that any government structures put it place will "follow" the popular will, rather than taking an overly proactive role in forming it. That would be an ideal expression of Democracy, as yet a worthy concept pursued with variable and imperfect results.
One of the unsavory aspects of Human Nature is the degree to which, being the not so distant descendants of opportunistic predator primates, the average persons "Status" is both objectively and subjectively derived by the subversion and compulsion of their fellow man. I believe ( I hope ) that we are moving away from this heritage, but history attests this to be a very slow process.
People in government are merely Human. Checks, Balances and a healthy degree of mistrust has created the best expression of representative democracy yet seen.
In 1928, in the case of Olmstead v. United States, Justice Louis Brandeis wrote, " Experience should teach us to be most on our guard when the Governments purposes are beneficial. Men born to Freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their Liberty by evil minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment of men of zeal, well meaning, but without understanding."
What kind of ironclad safeguards could be put in place that your "Fortress of Happiness" would remain the seat of responsive and responsible government, as opposed to becoming the oppressively defended keep of the "Knights of the Order of Altruism." Is it, in fact, Wise to believe that a governing power made up human beings will automatically rise above the collective natures of said human beings, merely because they are now part of something larger and more powerful. Even a casual reading of History would indicate otherwise.